Seems there’s a Black Sheep Knitting Shop just around the corner near the seaside in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Shop owner Maggie Messina has played the role of amateur sleuth before, a couple of times to be exact, and in author Anne Canadeo’s third knitting conundrum, A Stitch Before Dying, Maggie sets out to lead a knitting class during a “Creative Spirit Weekend” at a pricey New Age spa in Western Massachusetts, where positive thinking and good karma rule the day.

Maggie and the Black Sheep Knitters—her close friends Lucy, Dana, Suzanne, and Phoebe—get to share that weekend at the Crystal Lake Spa, courtesy of Maggie’s friend Nadine, who works there and needs a fill-in teacher. Intrigued by the promised participation of the spa’s new owner, Dr. Max Flemming, whose star has been burnished after an appearance on “Oprah,” the group sets out to experience a weekend of yoga, tai chi and enlightenment in a luxury setting. Instead, they encounter a deadly moonlight meditation, along with some decidedly unholistic activities and assignations.

Also making appearances are spa business manager Anne; her angry son, Brian; Joy, a yoga teacher who has a history with Dr. Max; assorted weekend New Agers, including former model Shannon; Curtis, a writer whose iPhone is busy taking surreptitious photos; and Rita and Walter, an elderly couple with attitude. Some participants seem to be on a possible investors’ list for Dr. Max’s planned spa expansion.

Maggie’s workshop combines “mindful knitting” with yoga, asking that guests “slow down and focus,” while encouraging “relaxation and contemplation” and “a kinder, gentler attitude.” Instead, suspiciously unkind intentions begin to surface, after one of the guests is found dead in a mountain hut. As the weekend wears on, the venal appears to overtake the cosmic, and tensions escalate. The Black Sheepers sometimes resemble eight-year-olds rather than adults, afraid of every twig, tree and unfamiliar corridor, but they share helpful ideas and clues in their close-knit group. A second death casts any remaining serenity to the winds, as guests vie to be the first ones out the door and safely home.

Maggie counts her stitches and casts on all the clues that are accumulating, and it’s not surprising to discover that the final, deciding clue has been hiding in her possession all along. It’s only a matter of time before she unravels the skein of problems and works out a pattern that solves the crime.

Upscale restaurateur Jane, who’s gay, has an ex-husband she thought was gay but isn’t, really. If you think that’s a good premise for a mystery novel, just wait til you read The Cruel Ever After, which has all these twists and turns and many more besides.

Cruel is Ellen Hart’s 18th Jane Lawless mystery, and those familiar with her work will respond to the returning characters: best friend and cohort Cordelia, she of the flamboyant opinions and equally flamboyant outfits; Julia, Jane’s ex-girlfriend, a doctor of oncology who’d dearly like to reignite her relationship with Jane; Jane’s brother, Peter and his family. But newcomers to the series can jump right in and quickly get familiar with the territory. The author has conveniently provided a cast of characters at the front of the book, and has a knack for catching you up on past history without becoming dull or repetitive.

Chess, Jane’s ex-husband (or is he?) is on the scene with a dead body, plus he’s trying to finagle the sale of the Winged Bull of Nimrud, a priceless golden statue stolen from the Baghdad Museum in Iraq during the invasion by U.S. forces, and which is now in his hands—or is it? Chess arrives on Jane’s doorstep, needing a temporary place to stay while simultaneously fending off and staying in the good graces of Irina, a curator of antiquities who is complicit in the pending sale of the stolen artifact. After the gallery owner (Irina’s mother) becomes the second dead body to surface, the plot escalates into a tangled and intriguing web of layered lies and subterfuge. To say that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, page by page, is to put it mildly.

Jane, suddenly beset by a street attack and some shady-looking followers, consults her friend, private investigator A.J. Nolan, who appears to be one of the few cool heads to get a handle on the emerging mayhem. Also keeping an eye on the proceedings is an eccentric preacher named Lee, who unaccountably joins in the action.

When someone near and dear to Jane is kidnapped, we’re close to reaching the final outcome of this complex and exciting story. Hart is skilled at giving us characters of interest and spark, and she deftly tidies up the loose ends into a satisfying pattern in this accomplished and expertly crafted page-turner.

When the word “Amish” comes up, it brings a slew of quick impressions: quiet, innocent, simple, non-violent. In Clouds Without Rain, the third in P.L. Gaus’s Amish-Country mystery series (originally published by Ohio State University Press) the author has added a slightly different shading to one particular Amish community, one that is sure to remain in readers’ minds for a long time.

Michael Branden, professor of Civil War history in a local college and newly deputized in the Holmes County, Ohio, sheriff’s office, is clopping about in a borrowed horse and buggy in Amish garb, seeking to apprehend a couple of teenagers in Amish dress who are robbing “the Peaceful Ones” as they travel in their slow-moving vehicles. His part-time undercover work is interrupted by a deadly crash between a semitrailer rig and a horse-drawn vehicle. Branden begins to work with sheriff’s deputies on the incident, one that comes to look more like a homicide than an accident, and his two assignments begin to intersect.

Branden gets better acquainted with a newly appointed Amish bishop, whose intellect and intentions are anything but simple, as well as members of the religious community he leads. Their deep roots in the land are matched against a powerful money-making land scheme certain to test the group’s ethical and religious underpinnings. Branden’s role as an “outsider” gives him a curious advantage, as he goes beneath a placid-seeming exterior of the Amish community to understand the effect that disaffected youth, warring religious factions and the siren call of big money have on the group, increasingly enmeshed in the modern world they try to avoid.

Gaus himself has lived in Ohio and written about Amish Country for more than 30 years. In his own online “Ohio Amish Journal,” the author explains that his aim is “to illuminate Amish culture as much as possible in the context of a mystery story.” His remarkable prose reflects the deceptively simple, sometimes stark lifestyle of these religious folk, with its affecting descriptions of clothes drying on a line, crops wilting in the heat of a flat summer sun, and the beauty of an Amish table, where “the polished lazy Susan held a pitcher of water, two glasses, a bowl of chipped ice, slices of a fruit-nut bread, and apple butter in a canning jar.”

This series is all about surfaces and the deep waters that may lie beneath, in a culture of contrasts where old and new share a sometimes uneasy co-existence.

A Bad Day’s Work, the debut novel of former CNN staffer Nora McFarland, is more than a compelling mystery—it’s a unique glimpse into the life of a small-town television news photographer. The story of Lilly Hawkins of Bakersfield, California, may be fiction, but the author’s fresh voice and careful attention to detail make the intrigue real—and will have readers rooting for the photographer, called the “shooter” in newsroom lingo.

Lilly can use all the fans she can get. Backstabbing takes center stage, since her co-workers want recognition at any cost—the end goal being a better job in a bigger city.

The action starts on page one with a middle-of-the-night call to go out and videotape a crime scene. But the station’s news director hesitates to send Lilly because she has made several serious blunders recently. She convinces him she can handle the assignment, but faces unusually strong resistance at the scene as she tries to get the important footage. Things deteriorate further when she gets to the office and finds she has made yet another mistake. And somehow she gets caught up in the ever-unfolding crime, leading to even greater traumas.

Some of Lilly’s problems arise because she’s a terrible judge of character, trusting people she shouldn’t and suspecting those who are on her side. For example, there’s her uncle, who is Lilly’s main champion in solving the case, but can barely stay on the right side of the law. Andunfortunately, she’s also falling for her least favorite slick reporter.

This cozy mystery-with-an-edge is especially appealing because the characters are not typecast. Far from bland, their zaniness is reminiscent of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. Plus, the reading group guide includes a terrific interview with the author. The next installment of this excellent new series can’t come soon enough. 

Debut novelist Tracy Kiely has come up with the smashing idea of marrying Jane Austen’s wit and social acuity to the form of the modern cozy mystery and gotten excellent results in Murder at Longbourn, which has all the signs of beginning a fine new series. Kiely uses some Austen plot lines, particularly from Pride and Prejudice, and gives her own 21^st century take on many of Austen’s favorite social situations (the poor cousin dependent on a wealthier one is particularly notable).

The appropriately named Elizabeth Parker has just broken up with her boyfriend, a man “obsessed with argyle,” and is desperate to find something entertaining to do on New Year’s Eve, something that won’t make her feel so alone. Fortunately, her favorite relative, her Aunt Winnie, is opening a Cape Cod B&B that night and is celebrating the holiday with a planned murder party. Despite the presence of Peter McGowan, the bane of her childhood, Elizabeth decides this is just the way to start off her New Year.

Things, of course, do not go strictly as planned: local, soon-shown-to-be-unpopular, wealthy developer Gerald Ramsey is found shot. Aunt Winnie is a prime suspect since Ramsey was determined to get the property she bought for her B&B. Elizabeth determines to investigate the crime just in case the police decide they have the guilty party in Aunt Winnie. Complicating matters is her interest in the handsome Englishman staying at the B&B. Is he the lover of the dead man’s wife or is he sincerely interested in Elizabeth? And what is Peter, who persists in calling Elizabeth by her childhood nickname of Cocoa Puff, up to?

Elizabeth, much like Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet, is not always as wise as she thinks she is, but she can be great company. She is often amusingly self-deprecating. At one point she compares her reflection to the appearance of the dead man’s daughter, who is looking particularly good.  The morning after an evening when she’s had far more to drink than normal (in her defense, she had a really awful day), she notes she looks “anything but dewy fresh.” She continues, “In fact, I looked like something that sucked the life out of dewy fresh things.”

In the next installation, this reader hopes that Elizabeth’s newly engaged friend and roommate, Bridget, will get more time on the page. Elizabeth’s known her since childhood and remembers that “her dolls were always clad like some bizarre cross of Joan Collins and Liberace.” Peter does not yet feel fully formed as a character, at least in comparison to Elizabeth, but that’s likely to be addressed in future books, as well.

Joanne Collings cozies up with a good book in Washington, D.C.

One of the biggest challenges faced by the author of cozy mystery series is finding original and convincing ways to involve his or her amateur detective protagonist in murder investigations book after book. After all, the best part-time sleuths have much in common with their readers and it is unlikely that most of them get involved in homicides on a regular basis. That the connection to the crime is in some way personal is a given for the first book; after that, more invention and imagination are required, or, perhaps, just honesty.

That’s where Clare O’Donohue is to be commended. The first death in A Drunkard’s Path (the second Someday Quilts Mystery after The Lover’s Knot) is connected to heroine Nell Fitzgerald only because the local police chief, stands her up on their first date without even calling to explain—a body has been discovered in their quiet Hudson River community. That’s enough to pique Nell’s active imagination, but her life is too full at the moment—she’s working at her grandmother’s quilt shop, starting art classes, meeting a talented but mysterious and apparently homeless fellow student—for her to get too involved in the investigation.

But the next death is someone she knows, and the young woman is killed in the backyard of Nell’s grandmother’s house. One of the suspects is Nell’s teacher, Oliver White, a famous artist who’s been showing a lot of interest in Nell’s grandmother, Eleanor. Though Nell now has all sorts of reasons to be curious, she’s also willing to admit that she’s also just plain nosy, a refreshing confession for an amateur detective.

Nell gets plenty of assistance from her fellow quilters of all ages, who are happy to unleash their own inner Nancy Drews in order to protect Eleanor. She gets less support from that police chief, Jesse Dewalt, and they once again take a detour on the road to romance.

O’Donohue finds a lot in quilting that applies to murder investigations: you’ve got to step back from what you’re working on once in a while in order to see it; the process is important; and “There’s no reason that solving a murder . . . should be any less organized than a quilt meeting.” These are lessons that Nell, a novice quilter, gradually takes in: “[A]nything, no matter how scary it seems at first, can be sorted out if you take it step by step. I just wasn’t sure if I was thinking about quilting, the murder investigation, or my relationship with Jesse.”

Joanne Collings cozies up with a good book in Washington, D.C.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t learn anything from reading fiction. Here is an abbreviated list of things I learned from Jess Lourey’s September Fair: Neil Diamond went to NYU on a fencing scholarship, his fans are called Diamondheads (a fact that would have come in handy when I worked in an office of Neil Diamond fans), there is a competitive “sport” known as sheep riding or mutton busting, and Araucana chickens lay blue and green eggs. But September Fair is a lot more than a compendium of Neil Diamond and State Fair knowledge.

Mira James, a librarian/newspaper reporter from Battle Lake, Minnesota, is on a week-long assignment covering fair activities. She’s glad to be there, having discovered four murdered bodies in as many months after moving to Battle Lake for a quieter life. She’s considered giving up on Battle Lake but decides to stay. “It was a new idea, this sticking-it-out approach, and it looked good on paper.” Then she witnesses the death of the new Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, and reporting on the fair gets a lot more complicated.

Mira now has to look into the murder as well as the fair’s attractions. She’s assisted by her elderly friend, Mrs. Berns, major Diamondhead and winner of tickets to Diamond’s fair concert, which she shares with Mira; Berns also introduces Mira to sheep riding. Also in attendence is Battle Lake’s steamroller of a mayor, Kennie Rogers, who talks with a heavy Southern accent despite her Minnesota roots.

Lourey’s affection for the state fair is evident. She’s particularly good on the food, especially Mira’s weakness, the Deep-fried Nut Goody on a Stick. (Just about anything you can imagine—and some things you can’t—are sold deep-fried on a stick at fairs.) Mira may question how anyone ever thought of the idea of sculpting a head in butter, but she remains respectful of the talent and difficulty it takes to do this. And, since this is the fifth in the murder-by-month series, Lourey indicates awareness of the darker side of the fair: behind-the-scenes nastiness and more serious crimes and the unsavory influence of big business on the foods we consume, deep-fried or not, in this lively mystery.

Joanne Collings writes from Washington, D.C.

The older I get, the more aware I am that there are just too many books being published. There's no way to keep up and read everything, so I've made reading guidelines for myself. One I settled on a few years ago was simply not to read any featuring a non-professional as the protagonist-detective. Personally, I would rather not know if my dry cleaner is finding dead bodies on the premises regularly, and, if I had a literary agent, I would certainly prefer that he or she concentrate on selling my book rather than on solving crimes.

Now Rosemary Harris has punctured my neat, serviceable little rule with her new series, which begins with Pushing Up Daisies. Her heroine, Paula Holliday, who was downsized from her media job in New York City, has started a landscaping business in suburban Connecticut. What better profession to give an amateur sleuth—she has an excuse, after all, to be digging around in the dirt, which is a natural place to find a body. There are archeologists, true, but landscaping is a less exotic, more believable job. Paula becomes involved in a mystery when she uncovers the remains of a long-dead baby on the estate of a pair of deceased sisters. Eventually there is a contemporary crime that also catches Paula's growing interest in detective work; the solutions to the mysteries central to the plot are surprisingly complex. Paula does have professional and personal reasons to become involved, so the reader doesn't have to be distracted by wondering why she doesn't leave the police work to the police. (And the policeman here, in the person of the overweight Mike O'Malley, is a person of interest, both to the reader and certainly to Paula.)

Harris, who is a master gardener herself, takes care not to pile on too much horticulture; actually, I would have preferred more. But the strengths of Pushing Up Daisies involve place, character and often sprightly dialogue. And note the scene in which the villain is unmasked: It's highly original and involves a maze, crushed oyster shells and buttercream icing.

Joanne Collings writes from Washington, D.C.

Sometimes it’s a bad day for news. If you work for a newspaper, that means that nothing is happening. News and Features lounge about, trying to cobble something together, and the editor worries about what can be mustered up for page one, or for the editorial space.

On a particular December day, the staff at the Alpine, Washington, Advocate faces such a challenge, with House & Home (Vida), News desk (Mitch) and editor/publisher/heroine (Emma) discussing the dearth of options for tomorrow’s paper. Fortunately for page one, the sound of police sirens on the street alerts the newsroom, and word that an eccentric artist named Craig Laurentis has been shot and wounded quickly spreads throughout town.